Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Comments
Being able to theoretically pump out x damage is great and all--and there is a place for personal improvement in that. It should also be relatively easy to figure out -in combat itself- whether you're doing well or not. When it comes to in-game, however, all of that ought to be invalidated by a couple good (or bad) decisions about movement or reaction or combination play.
Being boiled down to numbers isn't fun or compelling.
It is my hope that this game will be my "shuffle off" point
Relax a little @cypher86. It's just a poll and people are sharing their opinions. There will be people who want to optimize skill rotations and gear even in a sandbox type mmo RPG.
No real need to fall back to the old insults of epeen comparing, sandbox > theme park type arguments.
Is Ashes going to be a sandbox mmo? It certainly feels like a bit of a hybrid of both at the moment.
No matter what you do there will be players that strive to be the best they possibly can and they will go to almost any length to give themselves an advantage, there will be guilds that share these ambitions too and look to propel themselves forward to greater heights, groups like this are all an important part of the community too despite how other players may feel about them, they are exactly the people and groups that will shape the outcome of the servers - you can have a strong community whilst still having serious competition.
Class balance is an issue that affects almost every facet of the game and using World of Warcraft as an example Blizzard have made some horrible missteps when it comes to class balance, it's only natural that some players get annoyed when the developers make some glaring mistakes when it comes to class balance to the point it affects your gameplay too in the likes of battlegrounds and dungeons that all want the flavour of the month class.
In my eyes this all stems from the incredibly narrow view of 'community' where everyone is always best of friends, working together and all there just to have fun which simply isn't the reality of the world we live in, even more so in a player-driven game such as this.
Players will compete against one another, some will ruthlessly target each other, some will ally with each other, some people will be known as serious raiders that only take the best of the best, some will be part of jokey social guilds that nobody takes seriously.
There will be the notorious PKers, the unbeatable caravan raiders, the hardcore role-players that never break character, the famous crafters with rare recipes, the cut-throat merchants that try to corner the market and take advantage and there will be the feared guilds that everyone tries to avoid if they want to stay alive - for a lot of people this sort of stuff is a key part of the 'community atmosphere' that you talk about and it isn't toxic in the slightest.
Communities have been like this for as long as I can remember, there have always been the ruthless PvPers/heroic raiders that thrive on the competition and there's the sheltered 'Carebears' on the other side of the coin that just want to goof around and help each other, despite how they see the community completely differently they are all part of the same community whether they see it that way or not and shouldn't be trying to essentially hamstring others that play in a manner that they personally don't enjoy.
1: There's too much focus on DPS.
A dungeon shouldn't be so heavily focused on killing stuff.
But when pretty much all there is to do in a game is kill stuff - that's going to get the focus. Metrics should be giving us a wide variety of stats.
That's primarily referencing the leaderboard - since the devs say we will have a leaderboard. The leaderboard does kinda help us understand who might be getting the best rewards...whatever the rewards are.
(Though I don't think I care about that enough to miss them if there were no leaderboard at all.)
2: You have no visual for your STA/AG/HP. true. But you don't really need that because you can feel when you are tired or weak or in pain. The only way for us to determine that in a video game is via visuals.
The easiest way for us to interpret that is via numbers.
I think some people are arguing that metrics help us learn how to work smarter. Sometimes working smarter will include being better at DPS. But... it's that per second part that really makes focusing on that metric elitist. Do we really need to clear the dungeon or kill a boss as quickly as possible? Does it really matter if we killed the boss because I kited it while other people shot it full of arrows or because a bunch of mages it with fireballs or a bunch of rogues backstabbed it?
My kiting isn't going to translate into DPS, but it can be an important tactic for defeating a boss - especially if I'm buffing speed, rooting and snaring while I kite. The metrics need to also reflect that.
3: To me, themepark is about having clear, story-driven objectives - stuff to do besides kill stuff just because the stuff is there and we need xp in order to learn new abilities.
I play to be a part of the world regardless of whether a game is labeled themepark or sandbox. Being part of a world does carry much meaning when that world is static and our actions don't cause lasting change.
Good news is that Ashes is a themebox. We'll have clear objectives that will impact the world and cause change - starting with building a village.
Numbers will help us to know how many resources we need to build that village.
Stats, again, will help us keep measure the character attributes that will make our daily activities easier or more difficult to accomplish.
4: Ashes has political systems that allow players to govern settlements. There will be toxicity and elitism. Plus a core pillar is Meaningful Conflict.
So...toxicity will abound.
We will just have to choose our friends wisely to keep elitism at a personal minimum.
While some folks worry about omg x/y class is bad dps there's enough variance it looks like that I'd think such out cries would be almost zero if there's any semblance of balance making it just a tool to improve instead of a Stat stick or peen meter.
My main point is there's no point in keeping track of it. You can do rough damage calculations in your head, as all of us have done. If my party isn't dead, I healed correctly. If the boss died without hiccups, we had enough DPS.
I want to avoid a civil discussion devolving into demagoguery. So, please, let's dispense with the "carebear" labeling.
Competition is fine, when executed in a healthy fashion. There are ways to exceed at your chosen field, w/o meters, parsers, and the like. Those tools are as much about personal performance, as it is about judging other players performance, leading to a pervasive atmosphere of valuing solo performance, above group performance.
I understand that, in the end, we'll just have to agree to disagree, on this matter, and that's cool.
Take care, everyone!
^^Read NOPE^^
Since these metrics are almost for sure going to be in the game, what can we all do as a community to lessen any elitist fallout from the results?
People who don't respect the playstyle won't respect the playstyle - regardless of the label used.
Roscoe's use of the term was neutral. Perfectly fine.
Current MMO's have become bloated with features because they are either trying to emulate another game, or to compensate fundamental design issues. Intrepid does not strike me as trying to do either of these things.
If AoC has combat mechanics that are more skill and ability based rather than relying on raw DPS to burn down bosses before the accumulated damage kills the raid, then DPS and HPS might be fairly unimportant. I hope so.
If encounters are dynamic, then there may not even be min/max or best comps to fight a boss. Each time a group of adventurers goes into an encounter they may experience that visceral fear of the unknown and unpredictable.
PvE mechanics might be so difficult to master that DPS actually plays a minor role in combat. Positioning, avoidance, special abilities and the like might be the only way to win.
Trying to figure out what spells to use to sneak past angry mobs and plumb the depths of the catacombs to find secret stashes might be a way to progress without even entering into a boss fight at all!
All possibilities lie open right now. Dare to dream of something new.
^^Read NOPE^^
They have been asked this question on the Twitch streams and said that there will be all kinds of metrics....
Not that I enjoy the thought or am I for it. I thought I was voting for personal combat logs.
People have different viewpoints, absolutely. But the above quote does not seem "nuetral" to me. However, despite our difference of opinion, I'm not trying to deride @Rosco as a bad person, just to be clear.
I until recently played WoW and my guild leader required all these addons just to do Heroic Nighthold. Skada dps meter, DBM, GTFO, and a few others. I used them for 1 week of raiding then removed all of them and was the 1st or 2nd highest dps (even at one point hitting 7th highest fury warrior dps on NA servers according to Warcraftlogs). Not only did I find these addons unnecessary but I also had a lot more fun when I wasn't just a zombie following numbers/prompts. And for PvP these are usually worthless as PvP isn't like a boss that stands still and lets you hit it. a player will move around, use defensive buffs to reduce dmg, CC you to get some breathing room. And you should be doing the same to them you won't be hitting your damaging abilities 100% of the time like in a Raid.
As for healing meters I usually find these to be incorrect or not worth viewing as there is a lot more effecting your heals then the dps meter effects dps. First of all your healing done is going to be effected by how good your team is. The more dps the less time you have to heal and if everyone moves out of avoidable dmg there's less dmg going around. I remember our priest healers healing looked worse and worse every week not because he was bad but because as we got better gear and learned fights there was less to heal.
No one in competative pvp is ever using a DPS meter, the only thing that will do is get you killed and laughed at. PVP is timing. A healing or dps meter will do nothing to help you in any competative pvp scene
It turns the general community into a bunch of min/max elitist jerks.
In response though: I can definitely see your point of view on the matter, especially in the environment that Ashes seems to be building. I respect it, and I don't want to seem dismissive. In truth, I would even be perfectly OK if meters didn't make it into Ashes, I simply have a preference that they do. There are, however, soooo many different ways to (eventually ^.^) play this game and certain play styles will gravitate to different areas. Mine always seems to gravitate towards slaying the biggest baddest meanie monsters I can find, and meters help me with that.
I would like to mention that I do share an *almost* equal amount of time doing exploratory and social activities. I'm not just a raidbot, I just fully commit to whatever it is I'm doing at the time. One of the main goals I have is exploring the entire map as soon as I am able to (mostly) survive the trek. ^.^
In much the same way that rich and diverse lore helps a dedicated role player get into their character and create a good back story, and wide variety of landscape makes an adventurer/explorer more excited about finding hidden vistas, damage and healing meters help those that are bananas about slaying monsters feel like they are at their best.
Your example of growing with your class to learn it is a very good point, and one I wish more people would follow. I do. There are, however, always ways that your character changes when you finally unlock all of your abilities. The same applies when you start messing with max-level gear that tweaks your stats in unexpected ways. You need to evaluate your new setup, as your playstyle might drastically change. As with your example, you can indeed feel what some changes do for you as you experiment. But...what if a skill you ignored for a long time actually IS very useful, now that new abilities have opened up and you can stack certain stats a bit more? A direct comparison between the two would be a nice way to see how it compares and definitively prove that it's better or worse with some stat adjustments
Following your lead in using real life examples to back up in-game concepts: I have been Djing as a hobby for about 17 years now. I started with vinyl records, because CDs weren't a thing yet. I resisted the conversion to digital until about 4 years ago, because I thought it was cheating. Music should be played with feeling and emotion, and you should have a connection to the moment you found that perfect record in the store after searching for days or weeks! Digital downloads were cheating and just flat out cheesey!
When I finally made the change, I found out that it made my mixing so much quicker, so I could focus more on interacting with the crowd, adding nifty effects, dropping in nifty loops and just having more fun in general. It opened up a lot more possibilities for me to fine tune the experience I wanted to provide to the crowd. I was able to keep the organic feeling of playing on vinyl, yet increase my level of interaction and satisfaction at the same time. Not to mention the HUGE bonus of not having to carry my turntables and 50 pounts of records to my gigs. ^.^
That being said...some people do definitely abuse the digital age of music with piracy and buttons that do your work for you. Those people are going to be cheap and terrible people, no matter what they're doing, it just shows a little more when you get closer to them. If you stay away from them, you'll be able to forget they even exist. The same applies to games, where a jerk of a person will be a jerk no matter what.
I avoid those people (in game and out) like the plague, and all of my experiences are better for doing so.
I honestly kinda feel bad for many people in this thread, though. Perhaps I've just been incredibly lucky in my travels. In the last 19 years of online gaming, I have only directly encountered toxicity due to dps meters (or simply that git gud mentality) enough times to count on one hand. Providing that I may have forgotten half of them, that's 10 times. It wasn't even directed at me, but I would simply drop group and leave when it happened and the person spouting hate wouldn't let up. That attitude is fostered by people that silently sit there and let it happen. This is one case where you truly *can* fight by just walking away.
I don't know the pain of encountering the depth and breadth of flames that have been referenced in this thread, and I am thankful for that. I've encountered FAR more toxicity from standard open world pvp chat and general chat trolls in a bad mood. That happens on a daily basis.
Oh man...I've gone and written a novella again. =P